See Stephen Colbert Perform ‘The Ballad of Cliven Bundy’

Fox News "folk hero" and his biggest fan Sean Hannity get the tribute they deserve

Once more, the Cliven Bundy standoff crosses over into our world. Earlier this week, progressive author and activist Sean Shealy launched a Facebook page for BundyFest!, a proposed music-playing and penis-erecting festival to take place on the government land across the way from that codgerly lovable cattle-rancher’s home. Now Stephen Colbert, on The Colbert Report, has performed a song for the man facing off with the feds over whether or not his cows can eat their grass.

Dubbed “The Ballad of Cliven Bundy,” the ditty devoted to the Fox News-dubbed “savior” and “folk hero” starts at the 3:05 mark in the clip above, and finds our host aiming friendly fire at conservative pundit Sean Hannity in particular, while Strangers With Candy pal Geoffrey Jellineck (okay, Paul Dinello) adds some guitar flourishes. It’s a fine Dylanesque tribute with a country tinge — fine, that is, until Colbert turns the mike over to a pre-recorded Bundy: “I wanna tell you another thing I know about the Negro…”

Not only is the tune an impressive example of the Letterman successor’s musical chops (you try rhyming “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo”), it winds up a scathing indictment of Hannity’s rush to embrace a man who sorta seems like shoo-in for Tea Party sainthood, but who may in fact just be a run-of-the-mill nasty, stubborn, racist old coot who’s pandering to a certain demographic in order to get out of paying his bills. Imagine that! Seems like the Jerry Blank approach is alive and well:

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